kristeva 2007, rethinking normative conscience

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RETHINKING NORMATIVECONSCIENCE

The Task of the Intellectual Today

Julia Kristeva

It is common knowledge that the intellectual is an Enlightenment gure whose

prototypes date back to the French encylopedists Rousseau, Voltaire, and Diderot.

In the atermath o the crisis o religion to which these names are connected, thenineteenth and twentieth centuries gave rise to new orms o thought that were

to become the human and social sciences or, more simply, the humanities.

These disciplines progressively ltered into the university, notably the Ameri-

can university, though there remain media personality intellectuals outside the

academy committed to the same radical overhaul o thought. In taking over rom

theology and philosophy, the humanities replaced the divine and the human

with new objects o investigation: social bonds, the structures o kinship, rites

and myths, the psychic lie, the genesis o languages, and written works. We haveby these means acquired an unprecedented understanding one that disturbs

complacency and hence meets with resistance and censorship o the richness

and risks o the human mind. Still, as promising as these territories are, thus

constituted they ragment human experience; heirs to metaphysics, they keep

us rom identiying new objects o investigation. Crossing boundaries between

Common Knowledge 13:2-3

DOI 10.1215/0961754X-2007-005

2007 by Duke University Press

219

S y mp o s i u m : A D i c t a t o r s h i p o f R e l a t i v i sm ?


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compartmentalized elds does not in itsel suce to construct the intellectual

lie that we need now. What matters is that rom the outset the thinking subject

should connect his thought to his being in the world through an aective trans-

erence that is also political and ethical. In my own case, the clinical practice

o psychoanalysis, the writing o novels, and work in the social domain are not

commitments additional to my theoretical and scholarly work. Rather, theseactivities are an extension o a mode o thinking at which I aim and which I con-

ceive as an energeia in the Aristotelian sense: thought as act, the actualization o

intelligence.

In my experience to take the most relevant instance the interpreta-

tion o texts and behavior, notably in the light o psychoanalysis, opens up a

new approach to the world o religion.The discovery o the unconscious by

Freud showed us that ar rom being illusions while nevertheless being illu-

sions religions, belies, and other orms o spirituality shelter, encourage, orexploit speciable psychic movements that allow the human being to become a

speaking subject and a source o culture or, conversely, a source o destruction.

The reverence or law, the celebration o the paternal unction, and the role o

maternal passion as the childs sensorial and prelinguistic support are examples o

this process at work. My analytic practice has convinced me that when a patient

comes or psychoanalysis, he is asking or a kind o orgiveness, not to ease his

malaise but to nd psychic or even physical rebirth. The new beginning made

possible through transerence and interpretation I callfor-giveness: to give (and to

give not just to onesel) a new sel, a new time, unoreseen ties. In this context, we

recognize the complexity o the internal experience that religious aith cultivates,

but we also bring to light the hate that takes the guise o lovers discourse, as well

as the death drive channeled to merciless wars and political vengeance.

A new conception o the human is in the process o being constituted out

o contributions rom elds in the humanities where transcendence is considered

immanent. The new conception is o the human as synonymous with the desire

or meaning, and o that desire as inseparable rom pleasure, which is rooted in

sexuality and which decrees both the sublimity o culture and the brutality o

acting out. The intellectual today is conronted with a dicult, historic task

commensurate with our now-dicult juncture in the history o civilization. The

task is neither more nor less than to coax this new type o knowledge to emerge

progressively. In order to do so, we use the technical terms o our specic elds

but without reducing them to their strict meaning, which is always too narrow. By

positioning ourselves at the interace o the diverse disciplines o the humanities,

we give ourselves the opportunity to clariy, even i only a little, the enigmas we

have still to comprehend: psychosis, murderous hate, the war o male and emale,

maternal madness, nihilism, passion, sublimation, and belie.


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221An Intellectual Countercurrent: Bckenfrde, Habermas, Ratzinger

O what specic relevance are my remarks about the task o the intellectual at the

present time to the theme o this symposium? The homily o Cardinal Ratzing-

ers that is our topic here orms part o an intellectual current that runs counter

to the radical overhaul o thought that I have been describing. Two o the most

prestigious spokesmen or this countercurrent are Joseph Ratzinger and JrgenHabermas, who recently (though beore Ratzingers election as pope) became

collaborators in each others projects. Having remarked the ailure o rational-

ist humanism to avert or cope with twentieth-century totalitarianism and

having predicted that it would yet ail to prevent the economic and biological

automatization threatening the human species in the new century Ratzinger

and Habermas jointly diagnosed the problem as conusion on the part o mod-

ern democracies in the absence o a reliable higher authority to regulate the

renetic expansion o liberty.1 This joint declaration by the theologian and thephilosopher implies that a return to aith is the only way possible to establish

the moral stability required or us to ace the risks o reedom. In other words,

since constitutional democracies need normative presuppositions to ound

rational law and since the secular state does not provide an intrinsically uni-

ying bond (Ernst-Wolgang Bckenrde) it is imperative that we constitute a

conservative conscience: a normative conscience that would be either ueled by

aith (Habermas) or by a correlation between reason and aith (Ratzinger).

To counterbalance this hypothesis, let me suggest that we are already con-

ronted, notably in advanced democracies, with prepolitical and transpolitical

experiences that render obsolete any appeal or a normative conscience or or

a return to the reason/revelation duo. For these pre- and transpolitical experi-

ences head us toward a reconstruction (without recourse to the irrational) o

the humanism derived romAufklrung. The Freudian discovery o the uncon-

scious, and the literary experience that is inseparable rom theoretical thought,

are positioned at this key point in modern development. Their respective con-

tributions contributions to bringing greater complexity and sophistication to

Enlightenment humanism are not yet understood. In their pre- and transpo-

litical eects, Freuds discovery and those o literary theory, are likely to ound

the uniying bond that secular, political rationality has until now lacked. In any

case, it is on the basis o this hypothesis that, I believe, we should conceive and

develop our alternative to the arguments oered us by the trio o Bckenrde,

Habermas, and Ratzinger.

Our undamental problems may be religious, as this trio claims, but the

clash o religions about which so many are now so concerned is merely a surace

1. Joseph Ratzinger and Jrgen Habermas, Les onde-

ments pr-politiques de lEtat dmocratique,Esprit306

(July2004): 528.


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phenomenon. The real problem that we ace at the beginning o this new mil-

lennium is not one o religious wars, but rather o a rit that divides those who

want to know that God is unconscious rom those who preer not to know. Our

globalized media have bought into the preerence or being pleasured by Gods

existence, ueling the show that arms his existence with the whole o their

imaginary and nancial economies. The media have joined in not wanting toknow, in order to better enjoy the virtual to take pleasure in hearing promises,

and being satised with promises, o goods guaranteed by the promise o a supe-

rior Good. This situation, due to the globalization o denial, which is integral

to it, appears without precedent in human history. Saturated with enterprises,

seductions, and disappointments,our televisual civilization is propitious or belie

and encourages the revival o religions.

Nietzsche and Heidegger warned us: modern man experiences the absence

o a sensible and supersensible world with the power to oblige. The annihilationo divine authority, and with it all authority, be it state or political, does not neces-

sarily lead to nihilism. Nor does it lead to the systemic fip side o nihilism, which

is undamentalism with its attack on indels. Hannah Arendt long ago remarked

that, by making the divine a value, even a supreme value, transcendentalists

arrive, themselves, at a nihilistic utilitarianism. I would say that the alternative

to the nonchoice between mounting religiosity and its counterpart, narrow nihil-

ism, can be ound in the vast continent o the human sciences, which we should

try not to occupy but to viviy.

This task is one or specialists in every humanities discipline. In studying

literature, or instance, the specialist will experience how language transverses

sexual, gender, national, ethnic, religious, and ideological identities. Students o

literature, whether open or hostile to psychoanalysis, elaborate a risky, singular,

yet shareable understanding o the desire or meaning anchored in the sexual

body. The study o literature, o writing, upsets the metaphysical duo reason versus

faith. Those involved in the literary experience, and in a dierent but complicit

manner, those who are involved in the psychoanalytical experience, or who are

attentive to its issues, know that the oppositions reason/faith and norm/liberty are

no longer sustainable i the speaking being that I am no longer thinks o mysel as

dependent on the supratangible world, and even less on the tangible world,with

the power to oblige. We also know that thisIwho speaks reveals himsel as he

is constructed in a vulnerable bond with a strange object or an ek-static, ab-ject

other: this is the sexual thing (others will say: the object o the sexual drive o

which the carrier wave is the death drive). This vulnerable bond with the sexual

thing and within it by which the social or sacred bond is shored up is none

other than the heterogeneous bond, the very old, between biology and mean-

ing on which our languages and discourses depend and through which they are

modied so that, in turn, they modiy the sexual bond itsel.


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223In this understanding o the human adventure, literature and art do not

constitute aesthetic decor (nor can philosophy and psychoanalysis claim to bring

salvation). But each o these experiences, in its diversity, oers itsel as a labo-

ratory or new orms o humanism or rather, or the new conception o the

human that, as I have said, we have pursued and must continue to pursue. Under-

standing and accompanying the speaking subject in his bond to the sexual thinggives us an opportunity to ace up to the new barbarisms o automatization, with-

out seeking recourse in the saeguards upheld by inantilizing conservatism, and

ree o the short-term idealism with which a mortiying rationalism deludes itsel.

And yet, i the project I am depicting, undertaken within the human sciences,

suggests an overhaul or even reconstruction o humanism, putting the project

to work and dealing with its consequences can only be, in Sartres words, cruel

and long drawn out.

I was part o the generation that objected to sot humanism with its vagueidea o man, emptied o his substance, and its utopian raternity harkening back

to the Enlightenment and the postrevolutionary social contract. Today it seems

to me not only important but also possible to approach these ideals in a new,

more positive manner. For I am persuaded that modernity, which we too oten

disparage, is a decisive phase in the history o thought. Modern thought, which is

neither hostile nor indulgent toward religion, may be our one good option as we

ace, on the one hand, mounting obscurantism and, on the other, the technologi-

cal management o the human species.

To plead or the reconstructive role that the humanities can play in the

highly threatened social and political realm is, to say the least, dicult. I insist,

however, on our need to plead. Intellectuals must ght against the temptation to

give into depression. The case that we in the humanities have been making that

normative conscience, normative presuppositions, utilitarian nihilism, and the

supposed need o democracies or authority are based on obsolete and discredited

assumptions must be heard in public spheres. And so we must participate coura-

geously and appropriately in the democracy o opinion that our society o the

spectacle has become. This symposium might be viewed as an example.

Ideality: An Adolescent Malady

As my contribution, I would like to outline here the sort o response that an

intellectual in the human and social sciences can make to the kind o dilemmas

that tend to call up statements o reproach and retrenchment rom Ratzinger,

Habermas, and other apostles o normative conscience. Thinking especially o

the rioting and arson in French suburbs during 2005, I want to discuss something

that concerns me as a parent, writer, psychoanalyst, and intellectual: namely, the

malady o ideality specic to adolescents.


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The polymorphous perverse child wants to know where babies come

rom and constructs himsel as a theoretician; the adolescent, on the other

hand, is starving or ideal models that will allow him to tear himsel rom his par-

ents and meet the ideal partner, get the ideal job, and turn himsel into an ideal

being. Seen rom this angle, the adolescent is a believer. Paradise is an adolescent

invention with its Adams and Eves, Dantes and Beatrices. We are all adolescentbelievers when we dream about the ideal couple or the ideal lie. The novel as a

genre was built on adolescent gures: enthusiastic idealists smitten with the abso-

lute but devastated by the rst disappointment, depressed or perverse, sarcastic

by nature eternal believers and thereore perpetually rebellious, potentially

nihilists. You know them: they have been chiming their credo rom the courtly

novel to Dostoevsky and Gombrowicz. This malady o ideality conronts us

with a prereligious and prepolitical orm o belie: it is a matter o needing an

ideal that contributes to the construction o the psychic lie but that, because it isan absolute exigency, can easily turn itsel into its opposite: disappointment, bore-

dom, depression, or even destructive rage, vandalism, all the imaginable variants

o nihilism that are all just appeals to the ideal.

Civilizations commonly reerred to as primitive have long used initiation

rites, including initiatory sexual practices, to assert symbolic authority (whether

religious or the invisible world, or political or the visible) while justiying what

today would qualiy as perverse behaviors. Medieval Christianity, among other

religions, used mortication rituals and excessive asting to channel the anorectic

and sadomasochistic behaviors o adolescents and, in doing so, either downplayed

or gloried them. Modern society, which is entirely incapable o understanding

the structuring need o ideality, combines its destruction o the amily abric and

weakening o authority with a ailure to deal innovatively with adolescence. This

incapacity and ailure are blatant in the French crisis involving adolescents o

North and West Arican descent adolescents who are victims not only o bro-

ken amilies and the devaluing o authority, but also o social misery in its various

kinds, including discrimination. How could we in France have imagined that

they would enter the established order without rst satisying the structuring

need o ideality? How can we imagine restoring order by repressing these tattered

psyches? Certainly those who led in the expressions o social unrest, as well as the

younger participants, need to be sanctioned. However, or the authority o law to

be acknowledged, the legal code must address psychic lives capable o integrating

it. These immigrant adolescents need urgent help in reconstructing their psychic

lives, beginning with their recognizing that beneath their own vandalism is a

long-neglected need to believe.

This malaise o immigrant adolescents is widespread, but especially wor-

risome in France because there it arises rom a quite radical depth. Although we


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225should not underestimate the manipulation o religion by the pyromaniacs, or

the communal refex underlying the need or recognition expressed by destruc-

tion, the unrest in French suburbs did not bespeak a religious confict. Nor did

these reckless acts constitute a backlash against the law orbidding the wearing

o religious signs in public spaces. Frances religious authorities disapproved o

the violence; immigrant parents in no way condoned their childrens delinquentbehavior. Here was not a case o violence between ethnicities and religions (such

as we do see elsewhere). All parties concerned strongly denounced the ailure o

integration, to which the immigrants aspired. The objects burned were envied

symbols: cars, supermarkets, warehouses ull o merchandise so many signs o

success and wealth, so many things valued by amilies and riends. As or the

schools, day care centers, and police stations set on re these were and remain

signs o the social and political authority o which these adolescents would like to

be a part.Is it Secular France that one wants to destroy when booing its (previ-ously adulated) minister o the Interior? Is it Christianity that is attacked when

one burns a church? The blogs said Fuck France in a renzy o sexual desire

that illumined no program or discourse or concrete complaint. On the political

side, the need or an ideal, or recognition and respect, has crystallized in a single

struggle, an enormous one judging by the suering it has exposed and by the

extent o the changes it necessitates: the struggle against discrimination.

Can it be that we have not yet arrived at the supposedly looming clash o

religions? Or that our adolescent pyromaniacs are as yet incapable o donning

the cloak o religion to satisy their need or ideality? Those who promote these

notions go so ar as to indict French secularism or abolishing religious norms

that serve as saeguards. Clearly, I do not share this opinion. It is a view based on

belie in normative conscience, a belie that, as I have said, we must undertake di-

cult intellectual labors to get beyond. The crimes o our underprivileged teens

disclose a more radical phase o nihilism, a phase whose arrival is made known

only ater or beneath the clash o religions. This kind o violence is more seri-

ous than religious violence because it seizes the moving orces o civilization at

an even deeper level, in theprereligiousneed to believe, constitutive o psychic lie

with and or the other. It is to this space that the parent, teacher, and intellectual

are being called. While insisting on pragmatism and generosity rom the political

spheres, we ourselves must come up with ideals adapted to modern times and the

multiculturality o souls. It is up to us to do so. For adolescent nihilism makes it

abruptly apparent that, rom now on, any religious treatment o such revolt will

nd itsel discredited, ineective, and unt to ensure the paradisiacal aspira-

tion o these paradoxical believers, these nihilistic believers yes, necessarily

nihilistic now. We are conronting a crisis whose source isprereligious (though

it is a crisis o belie, o ideals) andprepolitical (though it aects the oundation


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o human bonds) a crisis that, contra Joseph Ratzinger and Jrgen Habermas,

who have made clear they understand the crisis, no religion or established moral

order or ideal o normative conscience will ever resolve. Resolution will demand

understanding oand forthe human soul, along with a generosity that ree intel-

lectuals can acquire but that standards o normative conscience are intended to

extinguish.

kristeva 2007, rethinking normative conscience

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